The Custodian of Marvels (36 page)

“Nothing bad,” I said. “But I need to talk to this gentleman alone.”

The boy didn’t ask further. Simple acceptance of the marvellous was one of his many gifts. He pulled on his coat, then sat on the step to lace his boots before climbing out through the hatch. The boat swayed as he jumped to the towpath. Listening to the crunch of his footsteps receding, I realised that John’s hand still lay where it had been when I awoke. My nightshirt had slipped to the side and his touch rested on my unclothed shoulder. It seemed the most natural thing. I reached up and stroked his hair. His finger traced from the side of my neck to the soft skin of my ear.

“I’m driven by selfishness,” he said. “You know I can never marry. There’s nothing I can give you.”

“You’re giving more already than you know.”

I brought my hand around behind his head and guided him closer. His lips brushed mine – a kiss as delicate, it seemed, as the touch of the moonlight. Then he pulled back.

“I’m a bad man.”

“That which you think bad is the very part I most admire.”

“You should send me far from here,” he said, then pressed his lips again to mine.

The kiss was firmer than before and more succulent.

“Perhaps I should,” I said, when next I breathed.

But reader, I let him stay.

SELECTED ENTRIES FROM

A GLOSSARY OF THE GAS-LIT EMPIRE

Accession Day

May 23rd 1828. The day when the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales finally signed the Great Accord. As the last major signatory, this event made it inevitable that the Gas-Lit Empire would grow to encompass the entire civilised world.

Negotiations leading to the signing had been long and fraught. The Kingdom,
de facto
leader of the unsigned nations, initially demanded a wide range of exemptions from the provisions of the Accord. But, as the number of unsigned nations dwindled, so did the Kingdom’s influence. Risking a slide into insignificance, it finally capitulated, having secured exemption only from the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, which had come into effect during the negotiation period.

The Kingdom presented this as a victory, since no other nation was exempt, ignoring the fact that none of the other signatories had wanted to be. However, Accession Day was afterwards remembered by Kingdom nationalists as a shameful moment in their history. (See also: London Time.)

The Anglo-Scottish Republic

The northernmost nation formed by the partition of Britain following the 1819 armistice. The city of Carlisle is its capital, the seat of its parliament and other agencies of government. It is a democracy, with universal suffrage for all men over twenty-one years of age.

The Anstey Amendment

An amendment to the armistice signed at the end of the British Revolutionary War. The border had initially been drawn as an east-west line from the Wash, passing just south of Derby. However, when news started to spread that Anstey was to be controlled by the Kingdom, new skirmishes broke out.

The Anstey Amendment was therefore drafted, redrawing the border to include a small southerly loop and thereby bring Ned Ludd’s birthplace into the Republic.

The border had originally been drawn so that it would pass through sparsely populated countryside. An unforeseen consequence of the Anstey Amendment was the bisection of the city of Leicester between the two new nations and its subsequent flourishing as a centre of trade and communication.

Armistice

The agreement which brought the British Revolutionary War to a close. Britain had been depleted of men and resources in the stalemate of the Napoleonic Wars. Three further years of civil conflict reduced it to economic collapse and the population to the point of starvation.

On January 30th 1819, the leaders of the opposing armies met in Melton Mowbray and signed the armistice document, which was later ratified by the two governments. (See also: The Anstey Amendment.)

The British Revolutionary War

Also known as the Second English Civil War, it ran for exactly three years from January 30th 1815 to January 30th 1819 and resulted in the division of Britain into two nations: the Anglo-Scottish Republic and the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. The untamed lands of northern Wales cannot be said to be a true nation as they are ruled by no government.

Bullet-Catcher

One who performs a bullet catch illusion. The term is also used to describe stage magicians known for other large-scale or spectacular illusions.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
is a collection of sayings and aphorisms, accumulated by travelling conjurors. Some entries seem to be transcriptions from an early oral tradition, possibly medieval in origin. Others belong to the Golden Age of stage magic.

The Circus of Mysteries

One of the many travelling magic shows to tour the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. Original home of Elizabeth Barnabus. After years of financial difficulty, it was finally closed in the early years of the twenty-first century after its owner, Gulliver Barnabus, was declared bankrupt.

The Council of Aristocrats

The highest agency of government in the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales.

The Council of Guardians

The highest agency of government of the Anglo-Scottish Republic. Sixty percent of its membership is appointed. Forty percent is elected by universal suffrage of all men over the age of twenty-one.

The Crown and Dolphin

A public house in London on the crossroads of Cable Street and Cannon Street, outside which John Williams, accused of the Ratcliff Highway Murders, was buried, with a stake driven through his heart. The body was rediscovered during the digging of a new gas pipe. The skull was exhumed and subsequently displayed in the pub.

Cultural Drift

A phrase used to describe the origin of cultural differences between the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales and the Anglo-Scottish Republic.

The cultures of Kingdom and Republic were not dissimilar at partition. But years of priding themselves on their differences caused them to drift apart. In
A History of the Gas-Lit Empire
, the process is described thus: “How often do we see an unhappy couple changing over time so that each more perfectly manifests the aspect of their character that annoys the other. So it was with the disunited kingdoms of Britain.”

Daylight Saving Time

At 4am on the second Sunday in March, clocks were set forwards one hour throughout the Gas-Lit Empire. They were set back again at 4am on the second Sunday in October. This with the exception of the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales, which used the second Saturday in March to set clocks forward and the second Saturday in October to set them back again. (See also: Twelfth Amendment.)

Department of Constitutional Veracity

A department of the International Patent Office charged with monitoring the organisation’s own compliance with the Great Accord and such amendments as comprised the treaties of its establishment.

It was brought into being under the provisions of the First Amendment, charged with detecting, prosecuting and documenting infringements. Its other duty was the delivery of a comprehensive triennial report to all nations signatory to the Accord.

Whilst its mandate included the imposition of capital punishment, few agents or officials were found guilty through its long history. It handed down death penalties on thirteen occasions, all of those cases falling during the chaos that characterised its final years.

Elizabeth Barnabus

A woman regarded by historians as having had a formative role in the fall of the Gas-Lit Empire. Born in a travelling circus, becoming a fugitive at the age of fourteen, with no inheritance but the secret of a stage illusion, she nevertheless came to stand at the very fulcrum of history.

No individual could be said to have caused the collapse of such a mighty edifice. Rather, it was brought low by the great, the inexorable tides of history. Yet, had it not been for this most unlikely of revolutionaries, the manner of its fall would have been entirely different.

The European Spring

The period of revolutions and utopian optimism in Europe that began with the overthrowing of the French monarchy in 1793 and ended with the execution of the King of Spain in 1825.

The Gas-Lit Empire

A popular, though inaccurate, description of the vast territories watched over by the International Patent Office. The term gained currency during the period of rapid economic and technical development that followed the signing of the Great Accord. It reflected the literal enlightenment that came with the extension of gas lighting around the civilised world. Though ubiquitous, the term Gas-lit Empire was misleading, as no single government ruled over its territories. From its establishment to its catastrophic demise, the Gas-Lit Empire lasted exactly two hundred years.

The Great Accord

A declaration of intent, signed initially by France, America and the Anglo-Scottish Republic in 1821, which established the International Patent Office as arbiter of collective security. Following revolutions in Russia, Germany and Spain, the number of signatories rapidly increased until it encompassed the entire civilised world. The original text is reproduced below. Subsequent amendments extended it to twenty-three pages:

When men of high ideal and pure motive devote themselves to the establishment of an agency and of laws that will surpass the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the nations, it behoves them, out of respect to the opinions of others, to state the cause that impels them so to act.

Whereas some sciences and inventions have manifestly secured and improved the wellbeing of the common man, We hold it self-evident that others have wrought terrible suffering. Never has it been the way of science to separate the seemly from the unseemly. Therefore has the good of all been offered up for sacrifice on the altars of egotism and narrow self-interest. Since the nations have failed to rein in their scientists and inventors, it has fallen to Us to establish, through this Great Accord, a supra-national sovereignty, adequate to the task.

In adding our signatures to this declaration, We are not embarking on a campaign of military conquest; rather it is Our intention to subdue recalcitrant nations through the evident truth of Our cause. But, should any nation rise up against this Great Accord, We hereby pledge to combine all the strength at our disposal into one mighty army and reduce the aggressor to abject submission.

We also pledge to offer up such funds as are necessary for the establishment and maintenance of an International Patent Office, whose task it shall be to secure the wellbeing of the common man. This it shall achieve through the separation of seemly science from that which is unseemly, through the granting or withholding of licences to produce and sell technology, through the arbitration of disputes and through the execution of whatever punishments are deemed fit. In creating an agency of such sweeping powers, We are minded also to put in place the means for its dissolution. Thus, should two thirds of the signatory nations agree, the entire accord will be deemed null, the International Patent Office rolled up and its assets divided equally between all.

With these high aims and clear safeguards established, We, the representatives of the republics of France, America and Anglo-Scotland, together with whatsoever nations may hereafter voluntarily append their names and titles, freely enter into this Great Accord on behalf of our peoples. In doing so, We hold ourselves absolved from all previous alliances and treaties.

Greenwich Meridian

The meridian bisecting the Greenwich Observatory was maintained as the Prime Meridian for cartographers in the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales, due to the exemption of that nation from the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment. Thus, charts produced in London had longitudes offset by 2°20′14.03″ westerly from those produced in all other nations of the Gas-Lit Empire.

International Chronological Network

With the rise of fast air travel, diversity of local timekeeping systems started to became problematic. A passenger boarding an airship in Carlisle could not know when, according to local time, he would be landing in Amsterdam, since the clocks of the Netherlands had no fixed relationship to the ones in Anglo-Scotland.

Thus the International Chronological Network was established, based on the Prime Meridian (see also the Twelfth Amendment). The world’s most accurate clock, designated ICN1, was constructed in the Paris Observatory as the global standard. This became the reference point for ICN clocks in each other signatory nation, which were set a certain number of hours ahead or behind Paris Mean Time. (See also: International Patent Court).

International Patent Court

A monolithic structure built on Fleet Street in London to house the Supreme Patent Court and other subsidiary courts. It was also the home of the clock designated ICN2. (See also: International Chronological Network.)